LOS ANGELES — A year after the company began accepting Bitcoin, Porn.com is reporting that the cryptocurrency is now accounting for roughly five percent of all sales at the adult entertainment company’s flagship site.
The revelation came in a recent interview with Bitcoin backers CoinDesk.com.
Although total sales figures were not disclosed, Porn.com VP Phil Bradbury characterized the earnings as being “substantial” — despite this amount being only half of the 10 percent that the company predicted in February of 2014.
Calling Bitcoin a “great addition” to Porn.com’s payment options, which also includes litecoin, dogecoin and wankcoin, Bradbury said that the company continues to consider other digital currencies, because the technology has had hidden benefits.
“Initially, we were simply trying to capitalize on the fact that Bitcoin allowed for somewhat anonymous payments, allowing people to join our site without having to give out their credit card information,” Bradbury says. “Since then we have realized that there are many benefits that we had not thought of,” such as a boost in traffic and sales when the site is mentioned in Bitcoin-related news stories — with this uplift accounting for as much as half of the site’s sales for several days following these media mentions.
CoinDesk notes that the steady sales seen by Porn.com contrast with those of Overstock.com, which also began Bitcoin trading at the same time, earning $3 million in Bitcoin sales in 2014 — a large decline over its projection of up to $15 million in sales for that time frame.
Instability in the value of Bitcoin has been attributed as a factor in uncertain sales volumes.
“We also see an increase in sales when there are large fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin, both when the price goes up and when it goes down,” Bradbury told CoinDesk, explaining that the five percent of sales that the company sees from Bitcoin has been ongoing since an early peak following the program’s offer — with a recent uptick in sales suggesting that the leveling of Bitcoin’s price is encouraging spending, as investors no longer see huge future profits.
“My thoughts are that a lot of people who have been holding their coins, hoping for the price to shoot back up quickly, are starting to begin to spend them again,” Bradbury said. “Much of the [Bitcoin] price decrease was a correction, and their coins won’t be worth $1,000 again within a week or two.”
Bradbury also underscored the importance of reaching the Bitcoin community.
“The crypto community is pretty tight,” Bradbury says, “they stick together and they share information,” such as how to use tokens when interacting with the company’s live cam models, and were more active in posting comments on the site.
“Shortly after launching Bitcoin payments on Porn.com,” he added, “we noticed in communities like Reddit, that users weren’t just sharing the fact that they had joined using bitcoin, they were sharing their experiences with our products.”
“The community not only wants the value of Bitcoin to stabilize and increase,” Bradbury concludes, “they want new products and services to adopt Bitcoin payments and there are happy and willing to support those products that help make Bitcoin a viable form of payment.”
For Porn.com, it seems, cryptocurrencies and porn are proving to be a winning combination.